


Breaking Point

by DaisyChainz



Series: Huxloween 2019 [11]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gaslighting, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, M/M, MCD is heavily implied (see end note for spoiler), Mindfuck, Not Canon Compliant, Not really a haunted object, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Snoke Being a Dick, Stress and depression - Freeform, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-10-24 23:00:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20713967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyChainz/pseuds/DaisyChainz
Summary: Kylo brings Hux a broken music box. Hux is the only person that can hear the music it plays.





	Breaking Point

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Huxloween!!
> 
> Day 15: Haunted Objects
> 
> The MCD is heavily implied in the last sentence. However, if you are on the fence about wanting to read: see end notes for who dies.

The weeks and months had started to run together. All one big blur of stress, and responsibilities, and keeping Starkiller Base on time and under budget. Snoke was breathing down his neck, snapping him into line when everything wasn't going perfectly, but somehow still unsatisfied even when they were. 

At some point Kylo had started staying in Hux's rooms. They had been having sex for several years; not a relationship, just to break the tension between them. But lately Hux had begun waking up next to Kylo, and it seemed like he was always around. 

It was odd, but frankly not unwelcome. Hux took some comfort in his rooms being less empty. Although he would never say it outloud.

And with Kylo came his things. Not everything, he still kept his own rooms. That dreadful death mask of his grandfather's stayed there, thankfully. Hux couldn't quite imagine being alone at night with that thing staring at him through the darkness. 

And sometimes Kylo brought things back from his missions. An odd crystal, a few small skulls, an aged bottle of some exotic wine. And the box. 

It was a very plain box. There was no decoration on the outside, although the grain of the wood was quite fine. But it was very old and weathered, a bit beaten up. 

The first time Hux had opened it he could tell it was a music box. He could see the gears and the chimes. But they were silent. He had thought he would take it apart and fix it, but it had been sitting on his desk untouched for weeks. There was no time between his bridge and engineering duties. And somehow Kylo filled his evenings--when he wasn't bent over his datapad. Kylo was a distraction, but Hux did his best to ignore that fact.

A few times he dreamt he heard the box play it's song. He had awoken, still able to hear it as the song had faded with the dream. 

One morning he was standing in the shower, the water trickling and falling around him. And he could have sworn he heard the music. He turned off the shower and listened. Nothing. It had just been the water. 

Then he was changing out of his uniform one evening, in the bedroom. He was pulling his shirt over his head and he heard a noise. The familiar strains of music, the one from his dreams. The music box. 

He had no way of knowing what tune the box played. It had never worked. But somehow he knew. He knew that the song he dreamt, that the water had played, was the box's song. 

By the time he got to the doorway the box was sitting quietly. Still on his desk. 

It went on like that for a while. He would be noisily working in the kitchen, or doing something else and thought he could hear it. But when he stopped he would be met with silence. 

He put it up to an over-taxed mind. Too little sleep, less now that Kylo had taken up residence, too many stims. His head was constantly full of activity: trouble-shooting the next problem, trying to stay one step ahead of Snoke's criticism, trying to force everything to go perfectly, go according to plan. It was little wonder he should imagine some back-ground noise. 

Then he started hearing it when he wasn't alone. 

It woke him one night. He laid still and listened to the familiar tune, complemented by the regular breathing of Kylo asleep next to him.

That happened four nights before it finally played while they were both awake.

Hux was sitting in the edge of the bed, putting on his boots. The music had been playing the whole time Kylo had been in the shower. Hux didn't think anything of it when Kylo walked back in the bedroom and started getting dressed. 

Until Kylo had looked at him curiously and asked, "what's that you're humming?"

Hux hadn't even realized that he was. Without thinking he said "the tune from your music box."

Kylo pulled his pants on. "I didn't realize you had gotten it working."

Hux looked at him in surprise. "I haven't touched it. It's been . . ." Singing to me. He finished in his head. 

Pulling his tunic on Kylo said "then how do you know the tune?"

If Hux had been better rested, less stressed, less comfortable with Kylo, he would have lied. Instead he simply heard himself say "can't you hear it?" It was almost as if someone else was speaking. Someone distant and disconnected from Hux. 

Kylo stopped what he was doing and cocked his head. "I don't hear anything. Are you sure?"

Hux simply shrugged. Kylo gave him a long look and continued dressing. 

After that it played nearly continuously when Hux was in the bedroom. It was always quiet when he walked out to the living area, but he could still hear it when Kylo was out there and Hux was in the bedroom. He fell asleep and awoke to the familiar strains nightly and daily. 

As he caught himself humming the tune on the bridge, he vaguely wondered if he should be worried. Surely he wouldn't hear the music so clearly if it was just in his head? Except, it was just in his head. He was apparently the only one that could hear it. He set aside the worry. Like most things about his life--it seemed like such a far away concern. 

What did concern him was his schedule. Hux was always punctual. No matter what. His schedule was perfect and his system of alarms and reminders had never let him down. 

Two evenings in one week Kylo had come to his rooms and asked why he had missed a meeting. 

"I didn't have a meeting scheduled." Hux insisted the first time, feeling very confident. 

The second time he felt less confident. 

He truly began to worry as he sat in an empty conference room waiting for, apparently, no one to show up.

An hour later when Mitaka had come in, he was always first, Hux confronted him. Mitaka had been flustered, but had shown Hux his own schedule. Not only was it the latest time, but it had been saved directly from Hux's original message. Therefore, somehow, Hux's schedule had been incorrect. 

After that, Hux became paranoid that he would miss a meeting with the Supreme Leader. That would have been wholly unacceptable. 

Hux checked and rechecked his schedule, and he started double-checking with Kylo. Every time he would ask Kylo would smile and answer indulgently, as though he were being ridiculous. 

From very far in the back of his mind, he thought maybe he was being ridiculous as well. But missing meetings, even those without Snoke, spoke of poor preparation, poor leadership. Even in his distracted state Hux knew he couldn't allow himself to slip that far. 

One night, laying in bed together, Hux turned to Kylo. "When did you say you were going with a delegation to Andros?"

"It's not Andros, it's Repax. And we haven't set a date yet."

Hux frowned. "We were discussing something about Andros. If it wasn't a delegation, what was it about?"

Kylo rolled towards him and slung an arm over his chest. "I never discussed anything about Andros with you. It must have been one of your officers." He closed his eyes. 

Hux lay awake for a very long time. He was certain it was Andros. And he specifically recalled discussing it with Kylo, because he had mentioned Andros would make a good training ground for his knights. He finally decided Kylo had remembered incorrectly, and had closed his eyes to sleep.

But above the music playing from the other room, and very far in the back of his mind, he knew better. 

*** **

He had begun obsessively checking his schedule, and the music had begun playing even when he was in the room with the closed box. 

He and Kylo had almost daily arguements about their previous conversations. 

Hux had also begun showing up extra early to his meetings with Snoke. He could still work, standing at the entrance to the ridiculous red throne room--it couldn't be called anything else. Hux used to worry that Snoke could hear him thinking how much he disliked it, but that voice was too faint to worry with anymore. 

He could see several of the armored guards, with their bizarre, exotic weapons, standing at their eternal vigils. He couldn't see Snoke, but he could hear him talking to Kylo. 

He listened with one ear as he typed on his datapad. 

"He holds too much sway with the military. The old imperials don't approve of him, but they hold him more dear than me. They find him an upstart, but I am the interloper." Snoke always spoke to be heard, voice booming throughout the room. 

Kylo spoke, but Hux couldn't hear what he said. He was at Kylo's back and he didn't have Snoke's volume.

"Ah." Responded Snoke. "You're having difficulty reading him because he's depressed. It's the stress he puts himself under, and the human psyche is so, so frail." He almost sounded sympathetic until he chuckled. 

Kylo spoke again and Snoke replied, "you must press harder. Convince him he's lost his mind, or to do something to convince his officers that he has. Everyone has their breaking point; he needs to reach his. And soon. Now go. Do as you have been told, Apprentice. My plans will not wait on your indolence."

Hux didn't look up from his datapad as Kylo swept by, too wrapped up in his own head to notice him standing off to the side. 

The very tiny, very far away voice spoke. 'They're talking about you.'

Hux heard it, but he pushed it away. He was about to meet with a creature that could read his mind from halfway across the galaxy. Those were not thoughts he wanted him to hear. There could be no indication he had heard their conversation. 

But mostly, the thought that Kylo and Snoke were betraying him was too big to contemplate. He was too busy, too tired, it was too overwhelming. He would have to unpack that later. 

Hux straightened up and walked in to meet the Supreme Leader. 

*** **

It was the next day before it happened. Kylo walked off the bridge after announcing he was going to meet with Snoke. Hux was left alone with his thoughts. 

The far away voice spoke, but it sounded clearer, closer. 

'Kylo has the power to make you hear the music. He can manipulate you, your mind, but he also has access to your tech. He could have changed your schedule. And it was only Kylo that said you didn't remember what you knew you had.'

The voice grew stronger as it talked. Hux leaned further over his datapad, tapping furiously. He didn't engage the voice, but he didn't try to stop it either. He knew it was right. 

Then he heard music. 

He didn't even glance up. Snoke and Kylo knew. They knew he had overheard their conversation. They knew he had figured out they were trying to drive him mad. To take control of the First Order military. 

He could feel Snoke laughing, behind the voice, behind the music, behind all the other noise in his head. 

But what they didn't know, Hux did. 

Hux knew that the gaudy throne room hadn't been designed for Snoke. The Supremacy had been originally designed by old Imperials. The kind that put a ballroom on a warship. Hux hadn't cared what Snoke did with it, because he never intended to use it. 

But that didn't mean he hadn't prepared it, just in case he decided to.

His thought had been that a ballroom held a gathering. And a gathering put a great many people, potentially a great many powerful people, in one place. A careless thing to do, he had thought. 

One never knew when a room such as that could be rigged. Rigged with poison, rigged to explode. There were many possibilities. 

And Hux was a very thoughtful strategist. 

By the time Snoke could read his intent Hux had already armed the explosives. He already had his finger on the button before the music rose to a deafening swell, and invisible fingers closed around his throat. 

He pressed the button. His throat closed completely and he was thrown to the ground, the music filling his head until he thought it would burst, and everyone else would, finally, be able to hear it.

He laid on the ground looking up at the ceiling, his vision starting to go dark at the edges. He felt the distant explosion tremor the bridge beneath him. 

He could breathe and, at last, silence met his ears.

**Author's Note:**

> Kylo and Snoke both die.
> 
> Alternate title: Hux Wins the First Order


End file.
